


(rapun)zel

by viscrael



Category: Original Work
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Fractured Fairy Tale, Gen, Transphobia, rapunzel is a gay trans boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 04:31:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6839167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscrael/pseuds/viscrael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>wherein rapunzel is a trans dude and i project all over my school assignments</p>
<p>(revised)</p>
            </blockquote>





	(rapun)zel

Zel knew he was different by the time he was six years old.

His parents despised him. For what reason, Zel didn’t know; all he knew was that they hated him so vehemently that it hung around them, festered and grew until their hate had its own spot at the dinner table. The only time they talked to him was to reprimand, biting sharp words that were as deadly as they were untrue—although they felt that way. He rarely spoke in return, because to speak was to set himself up for something worse: the reply that would come. His parents let their hate rule their lives. It was a bubbling, putrid thing that Zel grew to fear. 

They didn’t touch him. Maybe this was the worst injustice of it all; unfairly, he wished that they would hurt him, hurt him in a way that meant he had proof, hurt him in a way that meant they were forced to look him in the eye. They didn’t touch him. When he was little, very little, little enough that they hadn’t yet noticed his abnormality, his mother rocked him to sleep each night with a voice like honey, singing gruesome lullabies he would associate with warmth. His father would lift him up in the air and throw him around with shrieking laughter, smiling wider than Zel had ever known his father capable of. They would kiss the crown of his head. They would hug him goodbye. They would play with his hair and tell him they loved him.

They did none of these things anymore. 

This was not the worst injustice.

No, the worst injustice was what came after. By the time he was eight, they knew there was no way of reforming him, of turning him into something he wasn’t. His mother forced him into a dress for church one Sunday morning and he cried, yelling  _ I don’t like it  _ until she got so fed up with his screaming that she cancelled the whole affair. He denied his family when they called him their “little girl,” loudly claiming this was wrong until they were curious enough to ask why.

“I’m a boy,” he explained with finality, the issue closed. His mother exchanged confused glances with his father. 

“Honey,” she said, because the hate had not yet budded and so allowed her to still call him things like  _ honey  _ and  _ sweetie  _ and  _ darling _ , “what do you mean you’re a boy?”

“I’m a boy.”

Zel’s father frowned, a deep crease between his brows that would later mean Zel had something to fear. “Rebecca, you’re a girl.”

Back then, they only ever called him pet names,  _ pumpkin  _ and  _ sweet pea  _ and  _ little lady _ . To refer to him as anything else meant he was, at best, in trouble. But because he was eight and didn’t yet understand his parents’ particular brand of cruelty, he continued insisting that, yes, he  _ was  _ a boy. They left the conversation with a final  _ stop playing pretend, Rebecca, dear _ and a hope that the matter was settled. 

Of course, it wasn’t, and as his insistence of masculinity grew, so did their frustration and, in turn, their hate. It was born the night that his mother found out he had told a few kids at school that he wanted to be called a boy. She stood over his bed, leering at his nine-year-old form with a hostility he had never seen from her before. “This is getting ridiculous,” she said, and he flinched like she had raised a hand towards him. “We’ve dealt with this game long enough, Rebecca, now stop messing around. This phase of yours needs to end  _ now _ .”

It didn’t end, and this was the worst-case scenario for his family. His parents were rich, his mother a well-renowned heart surgeon and his father an up-and-coming movie director. If they wanted to keep their image clean, they couldn’t have news getting out that their child was abnormal, that he was something they didn’t want him to be. They sent him away to a summer home when he was ten years old, accompanied by a plethora of nannies and butlers and caretakers. 

“It’s just until August,” his father assured before he left in May. “You’ll like it there.”

But it had been a year since that hate began to grow, and now it sat visible next to them. It followed Zel on his plane ride down to Florida, taking up the empty space in the chair next to his window seat. He watched it until he was pulling into the driveway of this summer home.

It was less of a home and more of a mansion, tall and foreboding and without any semblance of warmth. No one had lived in it for five years, and while his mother had sent people down here to take care of it every now and then, it hardly felt livable. It was a dead thing he had to pretend was living. How could he survive in a place so devoid of love?

Zel survived this loveless place for another seven years. What was supposed to be a summer trip became a yearly trip became every moment of his life until he was all but trapped in that beach house. When his parents’ hate grew too much for them to bear, they stopped pretending they still loved him and started shoving this bubbling thing down his throat.  

They didn’t flat out say they were trapping him there, but it became clear this was their intention when in a final act of defiance they forbade him from cutting his hair. By that time, it hadn’t been cut since he was six—outside of bi-annual trims—and as he turned from ten to thirteen to sixteen, his hair grew and grew, past his shoulders, his waist, his knees, his feet, until it touched the ground and curled around his ankles. It was a clear message: if you’re going to keep pretending, we’re going to keep you from making it reality.  

 

\--

 

The mansion-turned-prison was situated directly on the beach, in a private lot of land his parents had bought some years ago. It was off limits to the public, with a large  _ NO TRESPASSING  _ sign in front of the steel gate surrounding the perimeter of the house. Because of this, Zel could only see the outline of people playing on the beach, so far off in the distance they looked like nothing but smudges. He rarely left the house out of shame—how could he stand to know others saw him as something he wasn’t, something he was forced into presenting as?—and fear of his parents. They weren’t around, but his nannies kept track of him, and he knew that they were required to send reports of him back to his parents every week. They visited rarely under the guise of “work is just  _ too  _ stressful,” and called him even less. He could go months without hearing either of his parent’s voice. He could go days without seeing anyone but the mansion’s staff, could go weeks without a real conversation, had gone years without talking about something  _ real _ . 

Zel was lonely.

It was his seventeenth birthday when he first met who would later become his best friend and savoir. Night had already fallen, and Zel was sitting at his window, watching the ocean with that same vacancy he had for years. The water had long since lost its magic, but still, he sat, his dark hair curled around him like a blanket, and watched. His birthday would be over in less than an hour. The staff had thrown together a makeshift birthday party, complete with an overly elaborate cake that looked more suited for a wedding and an off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday.” They cared about him, he knew, even if they were under strict orders not to. 

He was just getting ready to stand up and fall into bed when he heard a sound outside on the beach. Thinking it was an animal, he stayed and watched.

“Give it back, dammit!”

It was unmistakably  _ not  _ an animal. Darting across the sand were two boys, one being chased by the other and holding something Zel couldn’t quite make out from where he sat. A little further back was another figure, watching the two like they didn’t want to be caught associating with them. Zel could just barely hear what they were saying.

“Not until you tell me what she said!”

“Can’t we do this somewhere,” the second boy caught up, jumping for the object a few times; the other held it high above his head, out of reach, “ _ not here _ ?!”

“Why? It was your idea!”

The third one stepped in. “We’re going to get in trouble.”

“Lighten up, would ya? No one lives here!”

The second boy crossed his arms. “Of course someone lives here!”

“Oh, come on, have you ever  _ actually seen  _ anyone coming in or out of that big ass house? Have you?” The other two didn’t respond. “That’s what I thought.”

“Damien, I don’t think—“

The third figure was shushed abruptly, and they all stopped talking. With a jolt, Zel realized this was because they had spotted him. Heart jumping in his throat, he dropped down from the window out of view, clapping a hand over his mouth as if they could hear his breathing from down on the beach. They were talking in hushed whispers now, but he could still make out a few phrases, like  _ dumbass  _ and  _ trouble  _ and  _ I swear to god I thought it was abandoned _ ! 

There was shuffling, more whispering, and then nothing but the ocean. Zel cautiously pulled himself from the floor and poked his head over the windowsill. All three of the teenagers were gone. 

 

\--

 

Zel was seventeen and two days the second time he met who would later become his best friend and savoir. The night before, he had gone to sleep half-hoping and half-afraid that the teenagers would return again that night and he would be given the privilege of hearing their fun. They were living the kind of life Zel would have, had he been allowed it. He would’ve been the one on that beach past curfew, trespassing private property while his friends chased him, panting with laughter and lack of breath. He would’ve been the one to spot a figure in the window and think  _ I’m glad that isn’t me.  _ He would’ve, he would’ve, he would’ve. Zel would’ve been a lot of things.

So, two nights after he had first seen this glimpse into what his life would have been, he heard music playing on the beach outside his window. It was electronic and very loud and hardly something he could fall asleep to. Annoyed and confused, Zel pulled himself out of bed and opened his blinds to look out. The boy from the night before—the one who had been called Damien by his friends—was sitting at the tide with an old-school boombox next to him. He was looking at the mansion, but with the sort of look that meant his interest was only temporary. He was curious to see if anyone really lived there, Zel guessed, and so thought the best way to lure out any residents was to annoy them.   

Zel thought about opening his window and yelling loud enough for it to travel the length of the beach,  _ I could call the cops, you know _ . He only did the first thing, and then sat back on his heels and watched with morbid curiosity as Damien sat and watched him back. They looked at each other in strangely companionable silence, and it was the closest thing to interaction with someone his age that Zel had had in almost a year. 

The clock struck one A.M. before Damien finally switched off the stereo and disappeared back to the gate. Zel watched him climb over it with ease, and fell asleep at his window.

 

\--

 

Damien did this three more times before he eventually spoke to Zel. 

“What’s your name?”

It was yelled up at Zel’s open window. Damien didn’t have his boom box this time; today, he had come here for a reason. Zel told him his name and asked in return.

“If I may ask,” Damien started, which seemed awfully polite considering how rowdy he’d been with his friends not more than a week ago, “why don’t you come down here if you want to talk to me so badly?”

“What do you mean?” Zel frowned.

“Oh, come on, it’s clear you want to talk to me. You’re always watching me.”

He had to laugh at this, even with how nervous he felt to be holding a conversation with this near stranger. “Me? What about  _ you _ ? You’re the one who’s been watching  _ me _ .”

Damien looked like he wanted to protest for all of two seconds before his face split into an award-winning grin. “I guess I can’t argue with that. So, we’re talking. Why don’t you come down to make things easier?”

It was a good question, and one that Zel did not have one particular answer to. The truthful response would have been  _ because I’m afraid to,  _ followed with the reasoning  _ I’m scared of people,  _ followed once more by  _ I’m scared of getting close to someone because I never have before.  _ There were many other reasons.  _ Because you’re intimidating, because I’m afraid no one will like me, because I’ve never had a friend before, because I shouldn’t wish for more than I already have, because I should stay content with just watching you. Because I’m tied down, because I’ll only tie others down, because I’m not worthy of relationships _ .

He filtered through all of these responses and came up with the best one. “I’m not allowed to.”

“You’re not allowed to?” Even from Zel’s spot, he could see the way Damien shifted where he stood, waving his hands around as he spoke. “What, you aren’t allowed to leave your house or something?”

Zel felt his face heat up. “Not…really, no.”

“Oh…” Damien’s jaw went slack. “Oh my god. You’re serious? You seriously aren’t allowed to leave your house?! What, are you on house arrest or something?!”

“Of course not!” Zel was quick to assure, flustered. He brushed loose hair out of his face. “And it—it really isn’t as bas as you’re making it sound…”

“ _ ’Isn’t as bad?’”  _ Damien looked livid. “Like hell it ‘isn’t as bad’! It’s horrible! Your parents keep you locked up there? That’s child abuse!”

Something close to relief washed through Zel. He had never been given the luxury of having his abuse identified as such by anyone but himself. He had thought for a long time that he had made the whole thing up, that it was his fault for being transgender, that his isolation was earned, that their  _ hatred  _ was earned. To hear that, no, it  _ was _ as horrible as he’d originally thought, was reassuring and freeing at the same time. 

“I can leave sometimes,” he tried to reason, but it came out weak. “Just not all the time.”

Damien looked like he wanted to continue questioning him, his dark eyebrows creasing with confusion and something close to concern. He opened his mouth and then closed it a total of twice before he settled on something to say. “So we have to talk like this, then?”

Zel’s mouth felt oddly dry. He licked his lips, pushing down a wave of guilt. “For now.” And because it had been eating at him for the past week: “Why do you want to talk to me?”

“You were lonely.”

The way Damien said it made it clear it was not an observation but a fact; the sky was blue and Zel was lonely. Damien sent another smile, and this one felt softer, no less award winning but a little more private. “So, Zel, what do you like to do for fun?”

 

\--

 

They continued like this for two months, Damien visiting Zel’s mansion at night when no one could see him sneaking over the fence, sometimes with his boom box, sometimes with his other friends. He introduced them to Zel the sixth time he visited, saying he wanted his old friends to meet his new one. They were happy to finally meet the person Damien had been “fawning over” for the past few weeks, much to Zel’s surprise. Things went smoothly, as they always do before going south.

It was going to happen eventually, but Zel was still surprised when Damien asked one evening, “Why is your hair so long?”

Damien had meant nothing by the question, had only wanted to know because he was curious, and yet it did something to Zel that surely he would never be able to full explain. He tensed and felt his throat go dry. He opened his mouth for an excuse, the one he had produced so many weeks ago when he’d first met Damien, the half-lie that would keep his family from catching wind of this relationship—but no sound came out. The sound of the ocean filled their stifling silence. 

The other boy caught on. “You don’t have to answer—“

“My parents won’t let me cut it,” Zel blurted, and he felt his eyes water. It was his half-truth, close enough to the real thing that he felt his verbal filter being thrown out the window. “They—they don’t want me to—I’m a boy, see, I’m transgender, but they don’t want me to transition so they…”

If Damien had been surprised to find out that his companion was trans, he didn’t show it. His eyebrows furrowed. “Keep you from cutting it,” he finished. Zel nodded mutely, and hoped Damien couldn’t see him crying from the ground below his window. He had never admitted this to anyone. 

“They keep you locked up here because you’re trans?” To his credit, Damien wasn’t shocked by this news so much as angered. Zel wiped away a few tears hurriedly and nodded again. Damien took a deep breath, steeled himself, and started climbing the tree next to Zel’s window.

“Wh-what are you doing?!” 

Damien was either very determined or very good at climbing trees. He didn’t respond as he scaled the branches until he was eyelevel with Zel. “Coming to see you, what else?”

It was the first time Zel had seen the other boy up close. Damien was all dark tones and sharp, jagged edges; he wasn’t model beautiful, but standing on the limb across from Zel’s open window with the moon silhouetting his figure, he was close to it.  

Reality came back to Zel. “Y-you’re going to get yourself killed!”

“Am no—whoa!” Damien caught himself from falling at the same time that Zel reached out and all but yanked him towards the window. Damien came crashing into the room, landing on his butt on the floor. “Shit! Be more careful next time, can you?”

“You’re in my room.” 

“That I am.” Standing up, Damien rubbed his head as if he’d hit it, looking around the room with badly hidden interest. “So this is where you spend your life.”

“You’re in my  _ room _ .”

“We already established this, yes.”

Zel gestured frantically to the door and dropped his voice to a whisper. “What if someone comes in and finds you here? They’ll kill me! I’ll get in  _ so  _ much trouble with my parents!”

Getting in trouble with one’s parents was a universal worry, but it was even worse for Zel, whose mother and father would not hesitate to punish him in the worst way possible. They had taken away their love years ago, but there were still things they could do to hurt Zel worse than before, and Damien must have realized this. He paled. 

“Shit,” he mumbled.

“ _ Yeah _ ,” Zel whispered back, “’ _ shit _ .’”

“Well, I mean,” Damien glanced at the door, which Zel had thankfully locked out of habit before he’d “gone to bed.” “I’m already here, so we might as well talk.”

“We were talking before.”

“Oh, come on, Zel,” he motioned around the room, “don’t you want something more than just half-yelling out an open window? Don’t you want actual,  _ real  _ conversation?”

Zel didn’t want to say the words had hurt, but they did. “I thought we  _ were  _ having real conversation,” he said quietly. 

Damien realized his mistake. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what  _ did  _ you mean?”

“I just meant…” He ran a hand through his hair. “I just meant that I wanted to see you. Up close. And I wanted to talk to you like a real person. You deserve more than that, but…” He slouched in on himself, like he was trying to hide from Zel’s gaze. “That’s all I can give you right now.”

The room was quiet for a moment. Zel took a deep breath, glanced at the locked door, and sat down on his bed. When Damien did nothing but stand and look at him, he gestured towards a spot next to him. “You wanted to talk, didn’t you? What did you want to talk about?”

Damien’s shoulders relaxed, and he poorly hid a sigh of relief. He sat down next to Zel, their shins barely brushing, and his expression steeled. “Run away with me.”

 

\--

 

Zel was seventeen and a half when he ran away with his best friend and savior. 

It was a stupidly simple plan. Damien’s family was rich, and on top of that he had money saved up from his part-time job that he could use without anyone noticing. He took his car and parked right outside the  _ NO TRESPASSING  _ sign. He met Zel like usual, but this time when he climbed up the tree, he wasn’t the only one coming back down. They snuck to his car, Damien carrying the two bags full of necessities Zel had decided to take with him, and drove.

The thing about Damien was that he was just as lonely as Zel was. His parents were absent the same way Zel’s were—the only difference was that they didn’t keep him locked up anywhere. “And besides,” he said when he was originally pitching this ridiculous, extraordinary idea, “I’ll be eighteen in a few months anyway. We can just wait until then, and it’s not  _ really  _ running away.”

“But what about me?” Zel wouldn’t be eighteen for another ten months, but they didn’t have the time to wait around for his birthday next summer. They decided it would just have to do. Four months later found Zel in the passenger seat of Damien’s car, his hands sweating and his heart thumping wildly, excitedly, euphorically. He was leaving. He was leaving. 

The best part of all of this came three hours later, when they’d finally made it out of city limits and had found themselves a small motel to stay the night at—one bedroom with a bed and a couch, small and dingy and somehow so much better than the beach house’s winding, gaping bedroom. If freedom meant sleeping in motels every night of his life, he would do so gladly. 

Damien plopped their bags on the ground and sat himself on the couch. “Come here.”

“What for?” Even as he asked, Zel’s feet were already moving forward. Somehow in these sixth months, he had grown to trust Damien with just about everything.  

The dark-haired boy zipped open the bag and shuffled around in it for a moment, talking as he did so. “I figured since we’re completely cutting off ties with our families and all, and since your parents are absolute,  _ complete  _ dicks,” he found what he was looking for and sat back with a small smile. Twin blades glinted in the motel’s cheap light. The handle was gold. “It’s time for a haircut.”

Zel’s jaw went slack before he could order it not to. It was true that he was trying to get away from his parents, and that the six feet of hair following him would only serve as a grim, noisy reminder of his parents’ abuse—but he had never entertained the idea, not since he was little, not since he still had hope that his family would change their minds and give back their love. He had resigned himself to these shackles years ago, and the idea of having them suddenly taken off was both exhilarating and nerve-wracking. 

At his stunned silence, Damien continued, “I mean, obviously we don’t  _ have  _ to cut it if you don’t want to, I just figured since you’re a boy and all and you said they won’t let you cut it because they don’t want you to transition—“

“No!” Zel reached for the scissors as if to keep Damien from taking them away. “It’s—it’s okay. I want you to. Really.”

Damien smiled and held the scissors up. “Better get to it then. Sit in front of me.”

He had never cut anyone’s hair before and the scissors, while beautiful, were dull and not made for so much use all at once, but they somehow managed. Zel sat in front of Damien on the floor with his legs crossed and closed his eyes, listening to sound of his chains being broken. He felt lightheaded, giddy with excitement, and he wasn’t used to so little weight on his head. 

He felt bare and naked and completely, completely free.

When the deed was done, Damien set the scissors down and Zel stumbled to the bathroom mirror to see himself. He stood on the bathroom tile, staring at someone he’d never seen before. The person in front of him was elvish and small with blessedly, blessedly short hair scraping the nape of his neck. Zel pretended he wasn’t crying. Damien did too.

“Sorry it’s not all that good.” Damien stood in the doorway, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s the best I can do for right now. But later we could get you a real hairdresser to do it. I’m sure they’d be able to fix it.”

“It’s perfect.”

Damien blinked. “Really?”

Zel nodded. “It is. Thank you. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

A motel had never felt so much like home.


End file.
